Learn how to use a Singer’s Vocal Journal to track and review your everyday habits that can support or impact your vocal performance.
A Singer’s Vocal Journal is a dedicated space to track hydration, nutrition, sleep, hormonal changes and voice use.
You can identify patterns and tweak your vocal care habits to ensure your best speaking and singing voice every day.
(Updated 11th July 2022)
In this video, see inside my Singer’s Vocal Journal template:
- (00:38) – Why Should You Vocal Journal?
- (01:48) – Track Your Sleep, Hydration, Nutrition, Hormones
- (04:03) – Track Your Voice Use
- (05:19) – Track How Your Voice Is Feeling
How long should you use your Singers Vocal Journal for?
You want to use your Singer’s Vocal Journal for at least a week but ideally a month.
Along with tracking sleep, hydration and nutrition, keep an eye on high voice use patterns that may be creating vocal fatigue.
Vocal Journal Insights
After using a vocal journal, you will get some very useful data on your voice by monitoring your daily habits.
Voice Use
Tracking how you use your voice (and how it feels), can give you great insights.
High voice use can be a long periods of speaking. Over a few hours within the day or an entire day (or days in a row) of use.
If you have day job that requires you to use your voice a lot, you may be tiring out your voice during the week. Teachers or customer service personnel are high voice users.
When it comes to a weekend performance, you may already be vocally fatigued.
Sleep and Vocal Rest
Sleep is an opportunity for our body and voice to repair and rejuvenate. For an adult, it is recommended that you sleep 7-9 hours per night.
You can use your smart phone or a gadget like a fitness tracker (I use a FitBit) to identify your sleep patterns.
Along with getting the right amount of sleep that works for you, taking regular vocal rest for twenty minutes after any high voice use, will assist in minimising vocal fatigue after long periods of speaking.
Hydration
Tracking how much water you are drinking is essential. We often think we are consuming more than we actually are!
I use the app Water Minder to remind me to drink water and to track throughout the day. I then add the information into my vocal journal.
Nutrition
You will be more aware of any foods that could have a negative impact on your voice if you track your nutrition or specifically food allergen consumption.
For example, some people find dairy triggers excess mucus or phlegm.
Knowing which foods potentially affect your voice means you can choose to avoid any nutritional triggers in the three days leading into an important performance to minimise the impacts.
Hormones
Tracking for a longer timeframe can factor in hormonal fluctuations that occur in both men and women.
For men, the cycle is over a 24 hours period. For women, it is around 28 days.
Fluctuating hormonal levels can definitely impact your voice in the same way it impacts the rest of your body.
Adapting your vocal warm up practices to counter these effects is one way to manage these changes.
For example, you may find you need a longer or even shorter warm up depending on how hormones affect your voice.
Personalise your vocal care practices and adjust accordingly based on the information you track in your vocal journal.
Daily Vocal Care Habits
You can use all your vocal journal tracking knowledge to build solid daily care habits that support vocal wellbeing and preparation for upcoming sessions or performances.
Vocal journalling informations helps to ensure your voice is in optimum vocal health.
So go ahead and grab my Singer’s Vocal Journal template and start tracking your voice use today!
Comment below with any observations you make or if you have any questions.
Cherie
